


Like a Coal to the Hearth

by Celesma



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel True Forms, Comforting Castiel, Graphic Torture, Hurt Sam, Hurt/Comfort, Lucifer's Cage, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-29 07:05:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3886876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celesma/pseuds/Celesma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Sam realizes, somewhere around the twentieth time that his body's been turned inside out and Lucifer's playing the strings of his entrails like something out of a fucked-up Hieronymus Bosch painting, that there's no getting out. There is only the Cage, the lessons that Satan has determined to reveal to him, and his own resolve not to give him the satisfaction of breaking beneath them.</i> </p><p>An alternate ending after Swan Song, in which Castiel pulls Sam from the Cage with his soul intact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Coal to the Hearth

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize in advance for the extraordinarily gruesome depictions of torture; as the summary promises, there is a happy ending.

The first thing Sam learned upon descending into the Cage was that—had Lucifer and Michael's apocalyptic pissing match come to pass, bringing hell and paradise in equal measures down around humanity's ears—the little brother would have won in a heartbeat.  
  
The thought gave him little comfort as he watched his own hands tear his half-brother _(oh god oh adam oh no)_ into pieces, instantly loosing Michael from his imperfect shell. The oldest of the archangels howled in a way that was and wasn't like a newly born infant—Sam felt every bone in his inner ear shatter to the tune of _not supposed to be here not supposed to be here no no no oh father help_ —and then Lucifer was pulsing with obscene power, crushing the many-headed, many-winged, many-limbed creature into so much dust with a mere thought. Before his eyeballs melted into viscera Sam caught a glimpse of a thrashing lion's mane, of the frozen snarl of a bull, of matching eagle's wings and talons scrabbling desperately to hold onto some semblance of continued existence.  
  
_It appears I've lost my prom date_ , Lucifer spoke when the silence was complete, when Sam could be certain that there were absolutely no more obstacles remaining to distract the archangel from him. No distance between him and the thing that lived inside him.  _But then, this always was my domain. He didn't stand a chance here._  
  
He felt Lucifer curve his lips into a smile. His next words were deceptively jocular, pleased.  
  
_I guess I don't need to wear **you** anymore, huh?_  
  
And then there was evening, and morning: the first death. Sam wasn't even permitted time to scream before the rest of his body went the way of Michael and the younger brother tore out of the younger vessel, like a vanished twin _in utero_ taking back its rightful place in the world of the living, and he exploded into—

* * *

Dean's last words to him had been: _It's okay, Sam._

And some infinitesimal part of him had hoped—beyond hope—that maybe he was right. Maybe Sam would just burn out like one of the angels after being stuck through with Castiel's blade, his fragile soul unfit for the soil of Lucifer's cage. Metaphysical evolution at work. (He had certainly wished that for Adam as the two of them went tumbling down that bottomless pit.) Maybe God would be merciful, and the first death would have been just that: a first death.

But then the first death became a second, and a second the third, and the third—

Sam realizes, somewhere around the twentieth time that his body's been turned inside out and Lucifer's playing the strings of his entrails like something out of a fucked-up Hieronymus Bosch painting, that there's no getting out. There's no going home.

There is only the Cage, the lessons that Satan has determined to reveal to him, and his own resolve not to give him the satisfaction of breaking beneath them.

Between here and eternity, he doesn't like the odds.

* * *

The second thing Sam learned was that in the Cage, Lucifer didn't exist.

He was trying to keep the memory of Dean alive in his mind, trying to remember endless asphalt highways unspooling like ribbon and John in the driver's seat and his big brother idly kicking him with one swinging sneakered foot while stacking up the collection of stale air freshener trees that would serve as backdrop to their countless army men dramas—all the things that had kept him sane, kept him in control while Lucifer wore him topside—as the angel with a face that was like the moon regarded him from above, leaning forward on knuckles that were already painted in various shades of his insides. The tip of a single claw protruding from one of them—itself bigger than three Impalas stacked end-to-end, and there went _those_ memories—kept him pinned to the floor of the Cage, a wall of roiling, living flesh. The claw drew back slightly, freeing a rainbow-colored slick of lungs and heart and liver, like a dissected fish Sam had seen once during a brief stint in a fourth grade science class in Omaha, Nebraska.  
  
_You see, the Cage represented a bit of a low point in my life_ , the archangel explained in conversational tones, or tones that would have been conversational if Sam was another angel and not a helpless, hapless human soul screaming from the sheer torture of hearing his voice. _I sort of began living down to my reputation in your funny human stories. In the Cage, I'm not the Lightbringer._ The face that was too bright to be known seemed to twist into a smile, a cosmic mockery on the theme of the man in the moon. _I'm just the Devil._  
  
And then the Devil punched three more talons into Sam's body, and Sam knew no more.

* * *

Sam has a lot of time ( _all the time in the world, m'boy_ , the Devil amended with the angelic equivalent of a smirk) to think about all the things he'd done to earn this fate.

He remembered the punctuation mark to his litany of misdeeds—the nurse Cindy McCellan, married to her husband for six years, begging for nothing more than to be shown a little mercy after being forced to slaughter babies with her own hands (and wouldn't Sam know something about that? Even before Lucifer, there'd been Meg). And he hadn't granted it. Less to stop the world from ending; he wasn't sure _when_ that had mattered less to him than just getting a drink in his system, or showing Dean that he _could too_ help the angels stop the End Times before they'd begun. Even more appalling, somehow, was the fact that he had wished the entire time he had his lips pressed to her arm that she would just _shut up,_ couldn't she see he was _thirsty_.

 _The road to hell, the road to hell_ , the Devil reminded him. The volume on his voice had been dialed down, so that Sam's skull merely pounded with a migraine instead of cracking open like an eggshell.  _Or to the Cage._ _Same difference._ A shrug of one gleaming, alabaster-perfect shoulder. _I wonder how Matthew is doing these days, huh? Without his beloved wife._

"You don't really wonder that," Sam said. "But you're right."

 _I told you, Sam. I'll never lie to you. It's one of my little quirks, you know? And yet the guys in charge of cobbling together the Bible called me the Father of Lies, because God knows— **heh** —that no one likes to hear the ugly truth about themselves._ The Devil's voice was bright and pleased. _But not you, Sam. Not you. You're a willing audience, and I like that. So willing to take a good hard look at all the skeletons in your closet. Or, I'm sorry, the bled-out corpses in your trunk._

"I thought it might be a trick," Sam whispered. "That maybe there wasn't anyone else in there. Or—or she might still live, anyway." He remembered the exorcism afterwards, his tongue tripping over the familiar Latin words, and the emptiness in his chest as he watched the body drop to the ground like a rock. Remembered Ruby saying _look Sam, the hell-bitch probably burned the host out before we even got there_ , _it happens_ and wanting to bury her godforsaken knife in her heart and then himself. His head fell forward, nearer to the angel's unfathomable bulk. He felt so tired, but souls couldn't sleep, if he was even able to make himself sleep here. If he even deserved something as basic and life-renewing as sleep.

 _No. You were just jonesing so hard for a fix, your little reptile brain made up those excuses. Like any common addict. Just the way we made ya._ The Devil gave a sigh against him, making the lines of his flesh crawl. _Me, and Ruby, and Azazel, and—goodness—even your own mother. She was the one who sold you to me, after all._

Sam shut his eyes. "Please kill me."

 _Not yet_ , the Devil said, and then he was turning, burning with smoke and flame, and shortly Sam was burning too, incinerated in the light of a truth that suffered no sinners. And he was—oh yes, he _was_ —a sinner.

 _I'm sorry_ , he thought to Cindy as every synapse in his brain fried at once, a snarl of short-circuiting electrical cables, knowing that the thoughts that sparked from them would never penetrate the barrier. _I hope your Heaven is a nice place._

* * *

The third thing Sam learned was that the Cage was _cold_. It smelled and sounded like it ought to be a hot, living thing—sulfur and ashes permanently lining the insides of his nostrils—but the feeling, was. Just. It reached right down into his spongy bone matter and lived there in him, and he knew that no matter how long he existed (which was, apparently, forever), that frozen flame would always be there with him, burning but not consuming him from the inside out.  
  
_I told you, Sammy. Didn't I? I burn cold._  
  
"Go to hell," Sam grit out from between teeth that would have shattered into dust if he clenched them any tighter.  
  
_I did. You put me there._ And then: _I'm still a bit sore, about that._

* * *

The fourth thing Sam learned was that if souls didn't sleep, then archangels tired even less; and while angels were expressly discouraged from exhibiting any imagination, Lucifer had clearly ignored the memo when he'd first blazed a trail of hellfire and bodies off the Host's reservation.

There was never a time that the Devil didn't make his presence indelibly known. If it wasn't to him, then it was to his brother. Sam wept and begged to be the one subjected to the Devil's tender mercies, as Adam's body, limp and broken as a rag doll, was retrieved from some strange pocket of the Cage's reality and made to bear the brunt of the archangel's enraged frustration.  
  
And the rest of the time, when Adam was neatly put away, the Devil enjoyed taunting him with familiar faces. There was no end to his creativity, or perhaps no end to the number of loved ones Sam had let down: he came to him as John, and Dean, and Bobby, and Jess, and Ellen and Jo, and—once, only once—as Castiel.  
  
What words were there to describe seeing his brother's guardian angel? Cas, the eternal iconoclast. The one that had rebelled for Dean, the one that had allowed Dean to bestow a nickname upon him, and the one that Sam— _Lucifer_ —had murdered. Sam had long believed in the awesome power of angels. But he also believed in their tenderness, their love. He'd allowed himself to cling to that illusion as Castiel had taken his hand during their first meeting, cupped his large fingers in his own, like Sam was something fragile and to be protected. It had left him with such a good feeling, back then. The angel had done what he couldn't do, saved his brother, and now he had come to assist them even further with protecting the seals. Doing God's work.  
  
But between one breath and the next those good feelings were gone, because his words—his words. They'd left no room for error.  
  
_Sam Winchester. The boy with the demon blood._  
  
Even if Dean wouldn't admit it, his angel had been prepared to kill him for an abomination, back then.  
  
"But you still loved him anyway, didn't you?" not-Cas murmured, his voice as gravelly as Sam remembered it. And kind, in a way Castiel's voice never had been towards him. "And I don't mean in some war buddy way, either. Not that you were even that."  
  
Sam was naked, lying on his stomach on a filthy cot, and he couldn't move. He didn't know how long he had been trussed up like that, if it had been only a minute or a century. He watched helplessly as the angel approached on soft feet, the shadow of two great wings flickering on and off behind him, staring at him with undisguised lust in his brightly burning blue eyes.  
  
_And oh it sickened him to know that he thought, sometimes, of Castiel looking at him like he was a thing to be loved like that—_  
  
"He was always Dean's," not-Cas said regretfully, standing by the bed, fingers splayed across Sam's shoulder blades in the softest of touches. Sam tensed and waited for the agony, but nothing happened. "I mean, pulling a guy out of hell to stop the Apocalypse... that's a few hundred rungs higher on the ladder than babysitting his stupid baby brother with the demon blood addiction. And the handprint—well, that's just harlequin _romantic_."  
  
His easy words didn't comport at all with Castiel's serious tone, but he was still right. And Sam did remember. He hated it, remembering. He wanted the Devil to stop talking—just _stop talking_ and start ripping chunks out of him like he always did. Not... this. This terrible heart-to-heart, or whatever it was, laying him bare, exposing the core of him, all his secret wants and fears and the knowledge that the former would be denied to him while the latter would always remain within him, a conclusion as foregone as the movements of the sun in the sky, or a clap of thunder following a streak of lightning. Talking about his sins had been preferable.  
  
He hoped, wherever Cas was now, that he was happy. That he was surrounded by all his fallen brothers and sisters and all his power was back and he could stretch his wings wide, and fly wherever he wanted, and for as long as he wanted. That he could forgive Sam, for having failed so monumentally in reining in Lucifer before he could hurt what was left of his family. Suffering here was the very least that Sam could do as penance.  
  
He was still struggling to resolve himself to this when not-Cas _stroked_ him, and Sam's capacity for reason was instantly destroyed. He moaned and leaned into the touch. Then the angel's hand was flipping him over with ease—brushing lightly against his nipples, moving past his chest, the hard planes of his stomach, towards—  
  
_No. Nonononono—!_  
  
But if his body was not supposed to respond to a benign touch (no, not just a benign one, but _Cas's_ ), then his erection was clearly heedless of the imperative. It didn't matter that Lucifer's fingers left a trail of cold slime along the curves of his abdomen  _(dozat remind you of anything, Sammy?)_ , or that the sensation that coursed through his blood could not have been any further removed from the impassioned throes he'd felt whenever he made love to Jess. He was like clay in the archangel's grip, made for him to mold and shape and cleave to in whatever fashion he chose. He tried desperately to think about something else, retreat to somewhere else in his mind (Dean singing some Def Leppard song off-key, one hand lolling outside the driver's seat window, the other drumming the steering wheel while Sam exhorted him to _shut up and concentrate on not getting us killed, jerk_ ), but his thoughts were muddy and confused. The angel's fingers closed around that most secret part of him and tugged, once. Sam bit off the beginning of a groan.  
  
"But, I gotta hand it to you, Sam." The angel pitched his voice just a bit higher and Sam jerked like he'd been shot when he recognized Jimmy Novak's pleasant, almost childlike tones. "You're a kinky son of a bitch, you know that? You _do_ know he was wearing a married man. Ah, but don't worry—you're in good company here." Another stroke, this one harder and faster. A supplicating whine—whether for more or to make it stop, he didn't know—rose in Sam's throat, forced its way past his clenched teeth. His lips were bleeding with the effort of holding back. "I'm more than willing to be party to your twisted little fantasies. Just do me a favor and _let go_."

"Please—" and fuck, he was already begging. "Please, I don't want—"

"But that's the thing. You _do_ want it, Sam. I was in your head. I know what you felt, when you were around him. Just like I knew you'd want to blow off some steam on all your little buddies. I'm really a thoughtful guy, all things considered."

"I didn't... want _that_... either." It was hard. So hard to talk. The angel pulled on him once more, and it took everything within Sam not to buck his hips up into the movement. "You... _you_... you killed them, and made me think it was what I wanted."

"Details." Not-Cas shrugged. "But I don't think I'm wrong about this. Am I? Or you wouldn't be responding like an out-of-work whore."

He honestly sounded curious, as he drew closer to Sam, and then he was _on_ him, legs straddling his paralyzed form, his breath beating in icy blasts on his cheeks. The effect—arousal and disgust and complete, abject terror—was too much, and Sam did the only thing he could do then: he spit in the Devil's face.

The result was not what he intended. Instead of drawing back in revulsion, sliding out of the dream to reveal his true self and crush Sam into paste, the angel pinned him with an impassive look as he slowly wiped the saliva from his cheek, his other hand drawing a line along the young hunter's jawline.

"Like I said," he murmured softly, lips forming around each word as deliberately as Castiel's had when he was first struggling to navigate a human form. "Kinky."

He slammed forward into Sam and his mouth fell roughly on his own, stifling the young hunter's screams and coaxing forth a new wave of coldness, breaking over his stomach to join the wash of slime that the angel's touch had left; and the hard knot of longing in his gut hastily unloosened, pain and pleasure pounding through his brain, every molecule of his soul-flesh alight and alive with sated desire—

And Sam had never, not once, broken—he'd promised himself that he would hold out as long as he could, if not for his own sake then for Dean's—but he was breaking now, as beautiful and exquisite a china plate as any the Devil could have crafted and then shattered with his own hands. He screamed into the archangel's mouth for Cas— _Castiel_ —screamed for Dean, screamed to be saved. Prayed and cried for God like a child as it was being murdered. Screamed, finally, for Jess and Brady and all the friends he ever thought he'd made but were really demons, agents of Azazel's will, leading him towards this very fate, a lamb bred and fattened for the slaughter.  
  
_We will always end up here, Sam._  
  
He screamed again for Castiel, and for God. Freezing blood pouring from his throat, congealing as quickly as the words were coming out of him. The tears solidifying into diamonds on his cheeks, cutting him and loosing slow-moving streams of thick black fluid.  
  
Not-Cas broke the kiss, smacking his lips like a gourmand savoring the lingering flavor of a steak on his tongue, and paused to suck down the ink-black substance. "Oh, but Sam," he whispered. His voice was gentle and entirely too sympathetic. "That just isn't possible. Dad's a deadbeat, remember? And little Cassie—well—I'm sure they're still trying to clean what's left of him off the gravestones."  
  
As if to prove the point, not-Cas's body shimmered with heat before dissipating into a fine red mist. And this time Sam wasn't even extended the mercy of having his own life end at the same moment. The presence of the Devil slunk away, and Sam withdrew into himself, bloody arms wrapping around his naked body, weeping and retreating further into a warmth that no longer remained in him, now that he'd given in like the plaything he was.

* * *

And on and on and on it went.

_The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun._

* * *

The hundredth thing Sam learned was—was—

"Hello, Sam," Castiel said.

Sam's eyes flew open. For a moment he could see nothing at all, his vision a smear of gray, and then the reality before him  
  
shifted  
  
and he was sitting in an angel's palm _(not the Devil not the Devil not the Devil)_ , an abundance of unblinking eyes peering down at him through a canopy of six arched wings, each iris's brilliant inborn light bending into a profusion of rainbows, colors beyond human comprehending. It reached for him with the other hand, a cloud of enormous fingers terminating in wickedly curved claws—  
  
He fell back upon long instinct and screamed. The picture fuzzed over, slid back to bars of bones and piles of flesh as abruptly as Dean trying to revive one of those dinky little motel televisions that required no more sophisticated means of repair than whacking it. Castiel stared at him, his tan trenchcoat dragging the gore-smeared floor, his cornflower-blue eyes eerily similar to those of the angel he had just seen. He was bleeding from both palms, upon which Sam saw finely inscripted strokes of Enochian. Binding spells.  
  
_What the fuck just happened?_  
  
No. He wouldn't dare dream. Wouldn't—couldn't.  
  
He shrank away, babbling in fear, even as Cas reached for him with one bleeding hand—to heal, to hurt, he didn't have a clue, and maybe it would all be the same in the end anyway when you were in the Cage and deserved to be there. It was going to all go bad, he knew it even if he couldn't feel it, and he couldn't bear to entertain thoughts of hope even for one second. "No. No, you're not real."  
  
"I am very real, Sam," Cas assured him solemnly, his hand paused in mid-air, and fuck, it sure _sounded_ like Cas.  
  
"No. You're dead. I... I killed you."  
  
Castiel hummed and ducked his head, conceding the point. "Yes. But I'm back now. God brought me back. I am much stronger now—as strong as an archangel—so I was able to reach the Cage. I'm sorry, Sam, that it took me so long to find you."

"Where—" Sam swallowed hard, moistened his lips. He had not quite been able to put together the meaning of what Castiel had said, the words jumbling in his mind like the sounds of a foreign language. Instead he looked around wildly, expecting to see a hint of wings, the white flash of scales and claws. "Where is he? Where's the Devil?"  
  
"Lucifer?" Cas frowned and tilted his head in that way that, in another lifetime, with another Sam, had always reminded him of a curious bird. Not-Cas had never done that. He held out his hands to Sam, like he was Christ showing the stigmata signs to a skeptical disciple. "At the moment, bound. I used ancient binding spells. I received them from a very resourceful demon. A Bela Talbot. She is—how did she put it? _Bumming a ride_." He shook his head. "Anyway, they won't last long, so I need you to come with—"  
  
But Sam was laughing now, because really, that was just _too perfect_. And Castiel had come by himself? Lucifer wasn't even trying anymore. Not that Cas would have come for him, anyway, if it'd been in his power.  _Say it with me, kids: demon_ _blood, demon blood, I'm just t_ _he boy with the demon blood._

Everything about it screamed "hell-illusion," and Sam could not afford to break. Not again. Not again.

"Sam." Castiel sounded wary. "There is no time. We must hurry. I—"

"Adam," Sam broke in. Cas looked even more agitated, if such a thing was possible. "You need to forget about me and go get Adam. I don't know where he's being kept, but—"

"Sam," Cas repeated, interrupting firmly. "What do you see?"

"I—does it really matter right now? If you're really Cas, and you're really here to save innocent souls, then you need—"

"It matters very much," Castiel assured him. The hunter reared back, astonished. "Please, Sam. Tell me what you see."

Castiel had never been the type to preface anything with _please._

"I... I see..." Sam looked around again, the less to reacquaint himself with his ruined surroundings and the more to evade Castiel's piercing gaze, and the relief and love he felt _(didn't deserve to feel)_ as his eyes locked with the angel's own. Even not-Cas hadn't been able to take that from him. Assuming, of course, this was the true Castiel. "I see blood, and bones, and—"

"And me? What do you see when you look at me?"

"Well, your hands are all cut up, but—"

But Castiel was already shaking his head, like Sam had failed some kind of test. "No, Sam. That isn't right. If your soul was undamaged, you would be able to see that there is nothing here. You would be able to see that Adam is not here—was never here, because he is in Heaven—but most importantly, you would be able to see that I could not  _possibly_  descend into the Cage in a human form."

Sam didn't know what to do, what to say to that. Cas was frowning severely at him now, and he fought the urge to prostrate himself before the angel and beg for another chance to provide the right answer, to curry favor—but no, he knew Castiel wouldn't be happy with that. Cas wasn't Lucifer. He was holy and unapproachable in his way, and often  _cruel to be kind_ , but he was not the least bit self-serving, and that was part of why Sam loved him.

Again. Assuming this was really Castiel.

As if in recognition of Sam's Cage-addled thoughts, the angel's face softened and he spoke in tones that were considerably gentler. "This is not good," he emphasized again, but with no trace of anything that could be mistaken for condemnation. "Your soul is far more compromised than I thought. You've been taken in too deeply by Lucifer's illusions. I won't be able to extract you if you can't see— _truly_  see—where you are or what is happening."

"For all I know,  _you're_ —"  
  
"I am not," Castiel said, and now there were angelic tones bleeding through his wrecked human voice, silencing Sam instantly. "Be still, and know that I am telling you the truth."  
  
He reached out, cupped the side of Sam's face in one bloody palm. And Sam sagged, all the strength flowing out of him and into the angel's hand, because the sensation there was so foreign to him, and he realized after a beat that it was  _warmth_ , an incredible warmth, the angel's blood _(Grace)_ a glowing fluid that suffused his entire cheek—

And when he had finished blinking and shaking like a stunned animal he found himself looking once more into the eyes of the angel that had been holding him, peeking out at him from behind those glorious wings, hiding its face to spare him from agony even as it had drawn as close to him as an angel dare could to a mortal soul. Its fingers were closed around him, the claws that were sharp enough and powerful enough to eviscerate him in one careless slash wrapped around him so gently, like he was a newborn just taken home from the hospital. Sam, realizing that his face was pressed into the curve of one, was stunned to encounter a surface that was at once smooth as marble and velvety as carpet.  

 _It's everything I ever thought it would be,_  a secret part of him whispered. _Everything, and so much more._

And for the first time since falling into the Cage, since Dean had returned to him in the care of angels and he knew then that none of his prayers over the long years of his broken childhood had been offered up in vain, Sam felt joy crashing through his soul, a vibrant force of color and light. Thoughts of the Cage and his agony left him, were suddenly less than inconsequential. He fought the urge to fill his lungs and sing, instead sat up and reached out to touch the spectral mask that graced the creature's forehead, suddenly possessed of a child's curiosity. Painted upon the mask in broad strokes were the Enochian letters for _SHIELD—OF—GOD._

 _CASTIEL._  
  
Just before his hand could connect, the angel tipped its head out of reach. The young hunter rocked back on his heels in dizzying disbelief, transported once more into that wretched scene of blood and bones and gore, and Castiel was just a man. Cas's head was tilted exactly as the angel's had been.  
  
"Now do you see?" he said.  
  
"Yes," Sam whispered. "It's you. Cas, it's really you." The angel nodded, his hand still a warm weight on Sam's face, and the young hunter shuddered as one thumb ran over his chin like a caress, moved to cradle his jaw. It was almost identical to how not-Cas had touched him, except that the true angel's presence radiated warmth and green smells, like the arc of electricity in the sky before a thunderstorm or untold acres of apple orchards, an absolute antithesis to everything Lucifer had been. He struggled to keep his thoughts coherent. "I prayed... so long I prayed for..."

But then a wave of clammy coldness broke over him once more. He drew away from that comforting hand, tried to meet the angel's gaze head-on. "Cas, you can't be here."

The angel was visibly confused, his expression pinched in a way that would have made the old Sam smile. "I thought we just established that I was."

"No, I mean—you _shouldn't_ be here. It's dangerous. You could—"

"God has endowed me with new strength," Cas insisted. "I'm strong enough to withstand whatever the Cage—"

"No. Cas. I'm sorry, but no. I mean, you might be suped up now, but you know what happened to Michael, don't you? The De—Lucifer crushed him like he was nothing. I couldn't bear it if you died here."

"And I cannot bear the thought of abandoning you to one more second of agony," Castiel returned fiercely. Sam's heart burned and he tried to speak around the feelings that had solidified in his throat like a lump. 

"Don't... don't get me wrong, Cas." He licked his lips again, tried and failed to draw his eyes away from Castiel's. "I'm... I'm so grateful that you came for me. More than you could ever know. But Dean and I promised each other. He'll be okay without me. We don't need to throw a monkey wrench into things and—"

"I don't know about monkeys or whatever strange metaphor you're trying to use," Cas said impatiently, "but I am _not_ doing this for Dean."

"But—" The words _but everything you do is_ _for Dean_ were aborted before they could even leave the young hunter's mouth. "Then why are you doing it?" he finally said, lamely.

Castiel sighed as if he couldn't believe he had to deal with such a dull lifeform. "I am doing this for _you_ , Sam. I am saving you for _yourself_. Do you honestly think—right down to your heart of hearts—that you are merely a signpost pointing to other people? That you are not a person yourself, but just an object eternally turned to the service of others? And that when you outlive your purpose, you can simply be thrown away?" He swept his other hand around the room. "Even to a place like this?"

"Now _you're_ the one using metaphors," Sam chuckled, but that burning feeling in his heart had increased sharply, was starting to feel like a fireball. Castiel tipped his head forward, his face an inscrutable mask.

"Do you think it was not worth coming here to save you, Sam? Do you think that I am a fool? Answer me," he ordered, when Sam was silent. "Answer me honestly."

"I—of course I don't think you're stupid, Cas. But that doesn't mean trying to save me was the right play here. This is as good as it's gonna get, for someone like me. And I'm—" _not okay with it, no,_ but he could accept it. Had to accept it.

"Humans," Castiel said, and now he definitely looked pissed off, which frightened Sam but was probably a good thing insofar as it meant that the angel might finally decide to save himself and leave his ass in the dust. "You have a particular talent for never giving a coherent answer to anything."

"That might just be me," Sam said in a small voice. It was supposed to be a joke, but Cas didn't laugh.

"Sam," he said, more quietly. And Sam couldn't help himself; he learned forward to catch it, that tiny imperceptible quality in the angel's tone, pointing to something deeper than he could perhaps ever comprehend. Pointing to something about _himself_ , something that wasn't Uriel's loathing or Michael's dismissive contempt or Lucifer's enraged, borderline-erotic obsession. Something that was more than Castiel's initial assessment of him, _boy who screws around with demons and drinks their blood_.

And he realized that if he knew what that something was, he might actually want to be saved.

And Castiel would die. 

"Castiel," he whispered. "Go. Leave me."

"Sam—"

 _"Go!"_ he screamed, hope and despair mutating into frustration, and he reached out to shove Castiel away. The angel seized his hands and then he was sweeping him into his arms, holding him tight, and the son of a bitch wouldn't just _leave_ like he was supposed to. Sam fought, animal-like, to get free; but he was no match for Castiel's angelic strength and soon he felt Grace pouring into all the marks Lucifer had left on his soul, hairline fractures and gaping wounds, and Cas was speaking again, but it wasn't anything like a human voice and he didn't know what he was saying.

Every good memory he thought had disappeared forever flowed into the cracks

_(Waiting for Jess outside one of the study rooms he had reserved in the library, a small mountain of legal books balanced precariously in his arms, topped off with two cans of Diet Pepsi, the smell of fading printer's ink and bound pages gently wafting over him. That first slow dance, and Sam trying to work out in his head when would be the best moment to kiss her. And then being totally shocked when Jess, in her ocean-blue cocktail dress, gently laid a hand behind his head and tilted his face forward, and pressed her lips into his)_

_(Dean begrudgingly tipping him a wink and a smile as "Dreams" came on the radio. Even though Dean was vocal about his hatred for "Van Hagar" and didn't own a single post-David Lee Roth era album, it was still Sammy's favorite song, and he turned the volume up and rocked his head in time to the sickeningly sweet power ballad as Sam sang along with absolutely unselfconscious abandon)_

_(Those two blessed weeks of freedom in Flagstaff, away from hunting and Dad and things that went bump in the night, building a fortress of empty grease-stained pizza boxes for him and Bones to hide inside and knock down like a couple of four-year-olds—and now that he thinks about it, that's really the time in his life when he decided he needed to get serious about eating healthy)_

_(The feeling of complete and perfect awe as he stood in the snow following the salt and burn of a lost soul's body interred beneath a Catholic shrine, the chimes of the bells in a nearby clock tower announcing the first hour of Christmas morning. Inside the worshipers were peacefully conducting Christmas Mass, but as Dean and his father started heading back to the Impala he had stayed behind, lingering in front of an eternally burning arrangement of votive candles, listening to the snatches of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." He took down a match and lit one and thanked God for keeping him and his family safe, and for the gift of His Son, and for the gift of the angels that he knew must be watching over them)_

and Sam broke again, but in a new way, a different way, and instead of all the pieces scattering to far-flung corners of the Cage they were coming together _inside_ of him, rebuilding him, knit together with an angel's Grace. 

"That's good. That's better," Castiel was murmuring, his lips brushing the shell of Sam's ear. "You're almost there."

He had not once let go of him.

"Cas—" Something inside of Sam continued to fight bitterly. Tears rolled down his cheeks, came to rest in the tufts of Castiel's hair, drops of rain scattering onto the bare branches of a mighty oak. "Cas. Stop. Please. I'm begging you."

"Don't fight them," Cas soothed, as if they had all the time in the world and not— _at best_ —a few minutes before Lucifer was free and Cas was dead. "These memories are a part of you. They will restore you and make it possible for me to take you home. I _want_ to take you home, Sam. Believe that, if you believe nothing else."

"I can't. I can't believe—"

And the yearning now, for safety and acceptance and love, was terrible. It would have been better if Cas had never come at all.

"Would I have harrowed hell if it were not so?"

Sam's face crumpled and an explosive sob wracked his lungs. "Castiel." The name leaving him like a plea, or a prayer. The last of his strength fled from his legs and he was being lowered to the ground, still wrapped in the circle of the angel's arms. He was warm and safe and he didn't want anything more than this, wanted to just float and live in the feeling forever, even if he didn't deserve one iota of it. "Castiel. I'm the boy who ended the world."

"No. You are the boy who saved the world. You, Sam Winchester," Castiel said with infinite gentleness, lowering his face to his now, lips moving from his ear to touch his forehead, "are so much more than you think you are."

Another memory flashed through Sam's mind—flashed with sensory clarity, sitting in the darkened dorm room with Jess, both of them naked and hip-to-hip beneath the thin bedsheets, her saying  _your dad's wrong, Sam_ and _I love you, too_ —and then Castiel's mouth was traveling over his face, leaving soft impressions that were not quite kisses, carefully collecting every tear that clung to the young hunter's cheeks. Sam lifted his face, not daring to breathe, his expression one of soft reverence. The angel's eyes met his, filled with something warm and unreadable. Sam's lashes fluttered closed and a heartbeat later he felt Cas's breath ghosting softly over them.

"I can help you, Sam," he said. "I can help you, if you will let me."

Sam was suddenly, intensely aware of his own arousal, and he forced down the feelings of fear without much success. He'd been trained too well.

"I won't hurt you, Sam," Cas said, uncannily tuned to the run of his thoughts. His fingers curled around Sam's, the Grace pouring from them a warm and reassuring force. Sam's body shook with a pleasure he didn't think he could ever know. When the hunter still didn't answer, he added: "It will be okay. I promise you, it will all be okay."

"O—okay." Sam swallowed. "I trust you, Castiel," he said. "Help me. Please—"

He tasted salt as a few unmolested tears reached his mouth and he opened his eyes, in time to watch as Castiel's generous lips slowly parted for him once more, exhaled a stream of Grace: white-blue like melted starlight, accompanied by those delicate spring scents. His lashes tingled but before he had time to fully process what had just happened the angel was pushing his head down, just a gentle touch but unimaginably irresistible, and then he wasn't tasting salt anymore but Castiel's mouth on his own, pulling him in, a tiny planet unable to exceed the angel's escape velocity.

And Sam couldn't help it, he really couldn't. He slipped his tongue past the seam of the angel's mouth, wanting to feel the slip-slide of flesh that wasn't his own organs being rearranged, to feel a pleasure that was whole and real and not tainted with the Devil's sick designs. He wanted the taste—the _cold—_ of Lucifer scrubbed out of him. He half-expected the angel to draw back in revulsion, maybe even leave him and not return, after he'd given himself so willingly, but Castiel shocked him by pulling his tongue in further, welcoming it with his own, a sweet collision of moisture and heat. It was nothing like Lucifer's kisses had been. It was nothing like anything he had ever felt before, except perhaps when he knelt at the end of the bed in yet another motel room in yet another backwater town with a Gideon's Bible placed on the floor by his knees, and he could swear that God Himself was communing with him, condescending to his clumsy human attempts at praise.

"C-Cas." His voice broke on a sob. Castiel's teeth grazed his lips, his tongue continuing to apply a chaste but perfect pressure, and was this what it felt like to kiss a star?—was this the _wherefore_ for the beatific expressions in all the depictions of the mystics visited by angels (painted, sketched, sculpted) in all the museums he'd ever seen? It was too real, too beautiful, when Sam himself felt so very _un_ real, a mere wisp of air, a thing that began as dust and would soon to dust return. His bones were shaking too hard, his heart beating too fast—

"Relax," Cas murmured, the sound of his voice a sweet reprimand. "Relax. Any of my Father's creations who wish to be saved must be as children again. It would not do to dwell on things like unworthiness. The only correct response to grace is to accept it."

Sam understood this with his heart, even if his mind continued to rebel. He helped the angel slowly strip away his filthy clothing, then he guided Castiel's hands as they moved upon his trembling, vulnerable flesh. Each touch of his fingertips upon him was like a blessing, an absolving of sin, and right before he brought their lips back together the young hunter caught a flash of two radiant, pearl-tipped wings.

 _Sam,_ Castiel sighed into his mouth, and he nearly burst when he heard the angel's true voice. _You're more beautiful than you could ever know._

The Cage was gone. It wasn't that he wasn't noticing it anymore; it simply didn't exist. The world was nothing now but Castiel's lips, and Castiel's breath, and Castiel's soft soft hands trailing the region of muscle stretched taut between his shoulder blades, playing an unhurried sonata of pleasure. For an instant it seemed he would fall asleep like that, his shoulders slumped forward and his mouth slotted against the angel's like it had belonged there since the foundation of the universe. He could feel Cas's heartbeat drumming peacefully against his own, hear the roar of it in his ears, and for one deeply confused moment he thought he might actually be _inside_ Castiel, when the angel spoke again, this time in discernibly human tones.

"We're home, Sam."

Sam opened his eyes. He was still naked, lying in an unfamiliar bed—the springs didn't feel like motel-quality, nor the sheets like Bobby's thick comforters in Sioux Falls—and a hand was brushing hair off his forehead. The pillow beneath his head was soft. For a moment his eyes were unfocused, couldn't track properly, but then he met Castiel's blue stare. His words came out in a croak. " _Home_? How... how did you..."

"Your soul came into my Grace. You did very well." It wasn't much of an explanation. Castiel sounded pleased, and still just a little bit tender. "And now, it is time that you slept."

No. It was too simple, too easy. After the blood and sweat and tears that had been expended just to get _into_ the Cage, much less stay there, and they'd just left it all behind like him and Dean stepping off of a bad party— "How much time just passed?"

"In hell? Seventy-two hours." Cas spoke as if there were a baby asleep somewhere in the room. Sam supposed that he was the baby. He certainly still felt as weak as one. He realized that at some point Cas's hands had left his hair and curled around his wrists, rubbing life back into his Cage-cold palms. Sam could see now that they were pale and unmarked. "Of course, time moves much differently here, but—"

"So you mean for seventy-two hours, we were—" _making out_ was what he almost said, but that would have been slapping a trivial label on it: profaning it, reducing it to one of Dean's sloppy nights out. What happened between him and Castiel had been so much more profound, and _oh God in Heaven he really wasn't in the Cage anymore_. Hadn't even had to tolerate a final guest appearance from Satan. Cas had spared him all of that. The nightmare was finally over.

A terrible thought suddenly occurred to him at the same moment, dampening his joy.

"Cas, are _you_ okay? What about Lucifer? Did he get out of the spell? Did he hurt y—"

"I am fine. Sam, you really should sleep. Your soul hasn't had a chance to process everything yet. It needs rest and rejuvenation. I will explain anything you want to know later."

"Dean. Does he know, that I'm out?"

"Not yet, Sam. But he will, in time. When you are ready."

The angel continued to rub his hands soothingly for a few moments longer, then rose and moved to the far wall. Desperation clawed through Sam.

"Cas, where—are you leaving?" And then, not waiting for an answer, knowing he was probably asking too much already, too much from a creature that had saved him and sheltered him so intimately within its own Grace: "Could you—stay with me, maybe?"

Cas sounded puzzled. "I'm not leaving this room, Sam."

"Could you stay... _with_ me?"

Cas tilted his head, still looking as if he could not quite suss out the hunter's meaning. Then his eyes filled with understanding. He crossed back over to Sam in three brief strides and remained by his side, considering. When Sam thought that maybe he wasn't going to do more than that—that maybe, still, he hadn't quite understood—the angel slowly removed his coat and suit jacket and laid them over his shoulders, drew them up almost towards his chin, working with the utmost care. Sam retreated deeper beneath the extra layers—even with the Cage already in his rearview he was freezing, feverish—and waited. Clad now only in his slacks and a white dress shirt, the angel unlaced his shoes and kicked them off before settling in next to Sam, his body on top of the covers. It occurred to Sam that he must have been tired as well, after going to hell for him and even creating a body for him to return to, and yet he'd been willing to keep watch over Sam, to delay his own needs for his sake.

"Thank you," Sam whispered, keeping his head buried beneath the sheets. "Thank you for everything."

Cas's hand reached for him, cupped the slope of his cheek, so that he was forced to face him. Sam looked into his eyes, and for an instant he thought he could see through to the molten core of Castiel behind those human irises; could imagine his own pupils being blown impossibly wide, trying to match his stare. He felt the warmth imparted through his fingertips—remembered how the angel's kisses had set him to trembling with a similar warmth, and how unfair it was that he'd lost his memory of those seventy-two hours of bliss—and leaned into it helplessly.

"There is nothing you need to thank me for," Cas said. This pronounced solemnly, but perhaps also with the hint of a smile.

"Still." Sam wanted to shake his head, but was too weak even for that. "I can never, ever repay—"

He stopped when Castiel leaned across his pillow slowly, closing the tiny distance between them, and kissed both of his eyes. His lips chased away every trace of cold that might still be lingering upon them, Grace and breath conspiring to place Sam into a perfect trance.

"Sleep, Sam," he whispered, and his voice was a command Sam could not find it in himself to disobey. "Just sleep."

He draped his arms around him, cradling him close. Lost in feelings of absolute security and safety, Sam closed his eyes. And he slept.


End file.
